ABSTRACT
Scholars have posited an urban explosion in Asia and argued that ‘the fulcrum of urban growth’ is shifting dramatically towards Asia and away from Africa and Latin America. The rapid growth of the urban population is undoubtedly one of the key processes affecting Asian development in the 21st century. However, its dimensions, characteristics and significance vary from one country to another. With the ‘mean latitude of global urban population moving steadily to the south’ (Mohan and Dasgupta 2005), India has been considered a major contributor to this urban explosion, because of both its large demographic weight and the dynamics of its urbanisation. Several statistics – such as the increase in the number of 10-millionplus cities in India from zero in 1950 to three by the turn of the century and the fact that its share of the projected world urban population rising from the present 10 per cent to 14 per cent in 2050 – have been cited as evidence of ‘unprecedented urban growth’ in India. The significance of growth in the urban population and the urban transition in a country with the size and characteristics of India is self-evident. At the time of the last Demographic Census (2011), India had an average density of 382 persons per sq. km. and a population of over 833 million in rural areas, where the potential for creating gainful employment and for fulfilling socio-economic aspirations tend to be much lower (Government of India 2011). This chapter will attempt to establish, at the outset, the actual magnitude of this growth in more realistic terms, and then will analyse where such growth is occurring, the factors involved and the main consequences. It will also assess where and why rural-urban migration and urban growth are not occurring at the projected velocity and the implications of this sluggish growth for the country’s development.
